It should be safety-first on stem cell therapies
By Editorial,
The Boston Globe
| 02. 12. 2016
Untitled Document
As interest in alternative medicines has risen, so has the number of clinics pushing the supposed benefits of stem cell therapies. These businesses say stem cells have the power to help the body repair itself, without surgery or painful side effects. They’re using them to treat everything from cosmetic “flaws” (sagging skin and hair loss) to life-changing ailments (Parkinson’s disease and diabetes). The clinics’ pitches are carefully crafted to hype potentially dramatic results, without running afoul of federal regulators. A “rejuvenation center” in Arizona sells a treatment that will “improve your marriage.” A Florida stem cell company advertises “groundbreaking advances” that give patients “the ability to fight back against diseases once thought untreatable.” And a California outfit claims its customers have reported “higher energy levels, better sleep, and overall improved quality of life.”
It all sounds appealing, maybe even borderline miraculous, but the safety and effectiveness of such services is, at best, questionable. Until now, stem cell clinics have faced only minimal scrutiny from the Food and Drug Administration. Unlike drugs and medical devices, stem cell...
Related Articles
By Megan Agnew, The Times | 09.15.2024
Faith Hartley always wanted two girls — a blonde and a redhead. “I thought, I’ll have one that looks like me,” says Hartley, 35, smoothing her golden hair in the Los Angeles valley home she shares with her husband, Neil...
By Emily R. Klancher Merchant, Los Angeles Review of Books | 08.22.2024
IN THE Operation Varsity Blues scandal of 2019, 50 wealthy parents were charged with trying to get their children into elite universities through fraudulent means. The story dramatically demonstrated the lengths to which some parents will go to ensure their...
By Julia Brown, The Conversation | 08.16.2024
With their primary goal to advance scientific knowledge, most scientists are not trained or incentivized to think through the societal implications of the technologies they are developing. Even in genomic medicine, which is geared toward benefiting future patients, time and...
By Smriti Mallapaty, Nature | 09.11.2024
Under his microscope, Jun Wu could see several tiny spheres, each less than 1 millimetre wide. They looked just like human embryos: a dark cluster of cells surrounded by a cavity, and then another ring of cells.
But Wu, a...